Home/News/Politics/Greece/EP Left condemns Estonia Conference as “whitewash event insulting to European historic memory”

EP Left condemns Estonia Conference as “whitewash event insulting to European historic memory”

August 22, 2017Greece, PoliticsComments Off on EP Left condemns Estonia Conference as “whitewash event insulting to European historic memory”274 Views

The controversy started in Greece when Justice Minister Stavros Kontonis turned down the invitation to attend the conference “The Heritage in 21st Century Europe of the Crimes Committed by Communist Regimes” organized by Estonia.

Minister Kontonis justified his decision saying the conference in Estonia “sends a wrong and dangerous political message that revives the cold-war climate that brought so many suffering to Europe, runs contrary to the values of the EU, and certainly does not reflect the view of the Greek government and the Greek people, which is that Nazism and Communism could never exist as the two parts of the same equation.”

The minister’s decision triggered the strong reaction of the Greek conservative parties and ultimately sparked a heated and endless dispute primarily on social media where left- and right-wingers dig deep in the country’s recent history and the Civil War right after the World War II.

Former Education Minister and ex MEP, Marietta Yiannakou, a New Democracy lawmaker who tries to make two different ideological ends meet, claimed that Hitler’s Nazism and Mussolini’s Fascism in Italy were left-wing ideologies.

“Some have forgotten the Nazi party in Germany was national-socialist and therefore of left-wing origin.”

What???

It was Prime Minister Antonis Samaras (2012-2015) who first attempted to create a link between SYRIZA and Golden Dawn but left the Greek communist party KKE out of the ‘game’.

Anyway, a Greek following television programs and social media in recent days, can easily get the impression that we are in the middle of a Civil War again. Even thought this Civil War 2017 is not carried out in muddy battlefields but in the safe front of internet platforms and from the comfort zone of a home couch.

“You, Stalin!”, “You, Hitler!” are the most polite insults one can read on social media. Both sides accuse each other of “You, Fascist!”

As the ideological home-made dispute is at its peak, the European Parliamentary Group of European United Left/Nordic Green Left sat together and wrote a statement in which it condemns such an event organized by the government of Estonia especially while it holds the rotating EU Presidency.

“We strongly condemn the organisation by the Estonian Presidency of the EU of a ministerial meeting under the title “The Heritage in 21st Century Europe of the Crimes Committed by Communist Regimes” on the 23rd of August in Tallinn.

At a time when the far-right and neo-Nazis are taking advantage of the failures of EU policies, equating Nazism with Communism is historically false, dangerous and unacceptable. Moreover, the fact that the Estonian government chose to focus on “Communist crimes” clearly shows an intent to use the institution of the rotating EU Presidency for ideological purposes.

We call on the EU Presidency to cancel this historically and politically biased ministerial event that is unacceptable under EU norms. We urge the Ministers of Justice of EU member states, especially those of progressive orientation, to boycott the event as the Greek government already did.

This type of event undermine political dialogue and co-existence in Europe and is an insult to the historic memory of the European people.”

In far way America, attempts to equate the Antifa-Movemement with the neo-Nazis did not work out.

Will these attempts succeed in Europe?

However, I read that there is a petition calling for authorities to declare the Antifa as a “terrorist group.”

In an effort to crash progressive powers or the left, Nazism has turned socially acceptable again. Creepy. Hair-rising.